Tag Archives: Electronic Arts

Over the weekend, Electronic Arts finalised its acquisition of Respawn Entertainment, and the studio is now officially under the EA banner. Last month EA announced it was purchasing the studio for a princely sum of $455 million, and the announcement came only a few weeks before the loot box controversy and EA’s appearance at the Credit Suisse 2017 conference to discuss its finances and the way forward. Now that the deal is done, we can talk about what it entailed and why Respawn decided to sell.

If you’ve been paying attention to recent news, by now you probably aren’t surprised to learn about new games having microtransactions or pay-to-win schemes, especially if those games are published by Electronic Arts. Thanks to the uproar from Star Wars fans about the egregious progression system and loot boxes in Star Wars Battlefront 2, more scrutiny is being applied to other games published by the company and its competitors, and the next titles in everyone’s sights is UFC 3.

EA is clearly (and rightly) feeling a bit guilty for popping Visceral Games in the dustbin and putting a bullet in their Star Wars game, because the publisher can’t seem to stop talking about it. And it still comes down to an “it’s not me, it’s you” kind of scenario. Apparently we don’t like linear games anymore, so Visceral got the chop.

The controversy about Battlefront 2 and its progression system has completely taken over the gaming industry and its news outlets recently, and it seems like there’s no end in sight to the saga. Unfortunately for EA, their social media team keeps digging that hole deeper, and both the company and developer DICE have been quiet on the issue so far. Well, until today, that is. EA chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen appeared at the Credit Suisse Annual Technology, Media and Telecom Conference held this week in Scottsdale, Arizona, and during EA’s presentation of its financial status and future plans, revealed that the company didn’t offer cosmetics as the primary option in Star Wars Battlefront 2’s loot crates because they were wary of messing with the official canon.

So to recap, we’ve had an internet-wide protest against EA and DICE’s decision to include microtransactions inside the latest Star Wars Battlefront 2, which includes some pay-to-win mechanics through the use of skill cards for your character and your chosen vehicle, as well as holding back player progression by forcing you to grind endlessly to craft the Epic cards that grant you extra abilities on the battlefield. There’s also some limits on offline challenges and how much money you earn from the single-player campaign, as well as a time limit on how many credits you can earn when replaying offline matches. And the most downvoted comment in internet history on Reddit. Blizzard poked fun at them.

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